ULTIMATE COMPUTING - Quantum Consciousness Studies

Cytoskeleton/Cytocomputer 127
combined with the observed specificity of biochemical reactions.” This view is
doubtful since the cytoskeleton and other structures take on elaborate, nonrandom
forms. 2) Cytoplasmic intelligence stems from “supramolecular topology,
architecture and dynamics rather than freely swarming inhibitors and promoters
with their competing binding constants.” The complex spatial arrangements of
protein subunits and other molecules in macromolecular assemblies strongly
suggests cooperativity between biochemical events over large intracellular
distances. This leads to consideration of cytoplasm as a “giant multienzyme
complex” based on cooperative actions of actin, IF, and MT. This implies an
automatic, robot-like machine function of the cytoplasm, presumably set in
motion and directed by the genetic apparatus. This view is embraced by many
biologists who deify DNA as the prime mover in all biological activities and
neglect the “real time” cytoplasmic activities of organisms. 3) Albrecht-Buehler
suggests an inherent intelligence within cytoplasm. Intelligence implies the ability
to collect and process data and make decisions on the basis of these data. Also
important are intrinsic criteria that distinguish between desirable and nondesirable
outcomes. Intelligence implies the ability to assess global situations, not merely
reacting to local stimuli whenever and wherever they occur, and it implies
communication of data with other intelligent objects and appropriate adjustment
of actions. Albrecht-Buehler suspects that computers were discovered, rather than
invented, and that cytoplasm is a “chemistry based gel or even liquid data
processing system.”
Cytoplasmic intelligence may depend on collective dynamics of cytoskeletal
subunits. Parallel arrays of MT and neurofilaments provide a framework around
which microtrabecular lattice structures could form with varying durations of
existence as correlates of learning, information, memory, and consciousness.
Mechanical contractility of actin-myosin and other proteins within the
cytomusculature/cytomatrix could impart mechanical vibrations and cooperative
resonances, solitons, or interference wave patterns. Geodesic tensegrity nets of
MT, actin and their ordered water may be pulsating in the nanoscale at this very
moment within all living cells. Polymerization patterns of actin and other proteins
may also be regulated by calcium induced sol-gel state phase differences or
harmonic coupling with other microtrabecular and cytoskeletal structures.
Coherent nanosecond excitations and propagating solitons are additional
mechanisms which have been proposed to occur within the cytoskeleton. In the
brain, reinforcement from higher levels of parallel processing (neuron level,
neural net, brain) could fortify specific substructures such as wave patterns of
calcium coupled sol-gel states in neural cytoplasm.
The “genetic code” was decrypted by Marshal Nirenberg and colleagues
(1961, 1964) who were able to equate DNA base pair patterns with specific amino
.acid sequences in synthesized proteins. The “real time” information codes in the
cytoskeleton may be understood when cytoskeletal nanoscale events just beyond
our current capabilities become approachable with the advent of nanotechnology
in the next decades.